¥2,900,000 (Direct Cost : ¥2,900,000)

1. Contrastive studies between Japanese and the target (foreign) language Spanish by means of an investigation of the construction of theme-predicate and subject-predicate. Differences were observed in the Spanish utterances of Japanese speakers : noun phrases that can not be themes in Spanish sentences appeared as themes in sentences made by Japanese speaker.2. The chief investigator created elementary Spanish audiovisual materials, using HTML.(1) Each lesson consisted of body/text, grammar explanations, and exercises. Each section was linked together (as were supplementary parts such as inflection tables)(2) Because of its GUI, the use of the materials can be taught quickly, and each student can then work at his/her own pace listening to a native speaker reading sentences.(3) The Japanese characters and the Spanish characters with diacritic marks are represented at the same time in different frames.(4) In the grammar-explanation section the linkages of inflection tables and examples, pictures and animations are used in addition to explanations in Japanese to facilitate understanding.(5) The student can see immediately whether he selected the right answer or not in the exercises. In the translation exercises from Japanese to Spanish the student can listen to a model sentence.3. Judging from the responses to questionnaires and from the results of the term exams the use of the materials in the classroom was welcomed by the students.4. (1) Continuation of the contrastive studies and incorporation of their results in the materials, (2) Creation of more interactive parts and (3) that of materials of intermediate levels remain to be done in next stage.